Joe Nathan's first season with the Tigers will be his 20th season in pro baseball. The most soaring moment and most troubling moment in that long journey came less than six months apart.

On Oct. 6, 2009, in the AL Central tiebreaker game, Nathan escaped trouble to hold off the Tigers in the eighth and ninth innings and keep the game tied. Minnesota won in the 12th inning. Nathan considers it the most exciting game in which he has ever played.

In spring training the next year, Nathan felt discomfort in his pitching elbow. A few weeks later, he decided to have the "Tommy John" surgery, in which a ligament would be transplanted from his left wrist into the elbow. He would miss all of 2010 season, and he couldn't be sure if he would remain what he'd been for the previous six years: one of the best closers in baseball.

On Wednesday, the Tigers signed Nathan, who recently turned 39, to a two-year contract worth $10 million per season.

Moments after his introductory news conference, Nathan was asked, "On the day you found out you needed the Tommy John surgery, if you had been told you would be getting this good of a deal with this good of a team that carries you through age 40, what would you have said?"

"I would have said you were crazy," Nathan replied. He was also trying to take in that the Tigers, whom he wanted to play for, reciprocated his strong interest.

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Nathan came back so well from Tommy John surgery that it's hard to remember he had it. In the last two seasons with Texas, he has averaged 40 saves.

Many pitchers like Nathan have come back strong from Tommy John surgery, and some throw harder than before the operation. That's not true for Nathan. He acknowledges he doesn't throw with the same zoom he did when he got into the closing business with Minnesota in 2004.

But he still throws hard, and he mixes in a variety of pitches, accented by that knowledge from nearly two decades in the pro game. Nathan could be the pitching equivalent for the Tigers of Darrell Evans: the veteran who comes to the Tigers late in his career and then maintains his peak up to 40. At age 38, in 1985, Evans won the AL home-run title. At age 40, he hit 34 homers and drove in 99 runs.

"I've definitely learned how to pitch in this league," Nathan said. "I've picked up pitches. I've picked up a two-seamer that I'm very comfortable throwing."

There are two kinds of basic fastballs, the four-seamer and two-seamer, each named for how the pitcher holds the ball. The four-seamer is the one classified as "the high hard one" and "good ol' country hardball."

A two-seamer is the one over which the pitcher typically has better command.

"Even if I get a little movement on it, it gets it off the barrel," Nathan said of his two-seamer. "When you're playing at a ballpark like this (Comerica Park), you can get it off the barrel a little bit and it's a routine fly ball."

How well did he keep the ball off the barrel of the bat this year? He allowed two homers, and none after May.

Perfect history

Nathan always has worn No. 36 in the majors. Now he'll have it with the Tigers, and will it be an inadvertent continual reminder of how he's 36-for-36 lifetime in save chances against the Tigers.

For a few minutes in the ninth inning in the tiebreaker game on Oct. 6, 2009, it looked as if the Tigers might win the division by beating the pitcher who had never blown a save against them.

Nathan had entered in the eighth with runners on first and third and the score tied. He got out of that. With the score still tied, the Tigers put runners at first and third against him with none out in the ninth. Their best hitters were coming up.

First was the tough-to-strike-out Placido Polanco. Nathan struck him out looking.

Next was Magglio Ordonez, with Miguel Cabrera on deck. Ordonez hit a line drive that, if it hadn't gone right at someone, would have been the go-ahead hit. Shortstop Orlando Cabrera caught the ball and fired to first to double off Curtis Granderson to end the inning. It was perhaps Nathan's luckiest double play of his career and certainly the biggest. As he left the mound, with the Metrodome in a bedlam, he gave two huge pumps of his right arm.

In 61 career appearances against the Tigers, Nathan's only loss came in the Metrodome in 2007. He entered a tied game in the ninth and gave up the deciding run in the 10th on an RBI double by Brandon Inge.

Inge had another 10th-inning tiebreaking double in Minnesota in that tiebreaker game in '09. But the Twins tied the score in the bottom of the inning. When the Twins won two innings later, it was clear Nathan's saving of the tie in the eighth and ninth innings was as big of a save against the Tigers as any of his official ones.

Teammates again

Nathan became Torii Hunter's teammate in Minnesota when he arrived in a trade from San Francisco before the 2004 season. They played together on the Twins for four seasons, until Hunter left as a free agent and joined the Angels in 2008.

On opening night that year, Nathan struck him in the ninth inning as he saved a one-run win. It was the second time they'd faced each other; when Nathan was with the Giants, in 2003, he retired Hunter in an interleague game. For his career, Hunter is 1-for-5 against Nathan.

Nathan left the Twins for the Rangers as a free agent two years ago. Now Nathan, like Hunter, has chosen the Tigers as his third stop in the majors in part because he likes his chances with Detroit of making his first trip to the World Series.

The Tigers had an obvious need for each player. A year ago, the Tigers required a right fielder and No. 2 hitter, and Hunter had filled both jobs. This time around the Tigers needed a closer.

As free agency got ready to unfold this year, Nathan let Hunter know how badly he wanted to rejoin him. Hunter responded with the kind of enthusiasm that made him a first-year hit with everyone in Detroit. "He was going to get on the phone and make as many calls as he could," Nathan said.

Tigers general manager Dave Dombrowski referred to Hunter as Nathan's "assistant agent" who "texted us in the very beginning about 'Why don't you make this happen.'"

So while Hunter is 1-for-5 against Nathan, he's 1-for-1 in helping make him a Tiger.

When the American League Championship Series ended in October, Hunter was in the on-deck circle at Fenway Park. As the Red Sox rushed the field to celebrate reaching the World Series, Hunter trudged back to the Tigers' dugout, helmet in hand, his quest to reach baseball's biggest event again stymied. Hunter has gone to the playoffs in seven seasons, and he's never reached the World Series.

Perhaps next year's championship series will end differently for Hunter. Instead of walking back to the dugout, perhaps he will charge from rightfield to the mound to mob Nathan after he gets the final out -- the out that sends both to their first World Series.